


Of Our Own Design

by EdnaRose



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Family, Friendship, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3099887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdnaRose/pseuds/EdnaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A peculiar little girl attaches herself to Rose after an accident, bringing the Doctor and his Companion to make some tough discoveries. Can they figure who, what, and why Luna has fallen into their lives, and will they be willing to become the family of a little girl who has no one?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Burning and Blue Eyes

She was going to kill him when he came back. He said he'd be gone for a couple  of days at the most, and now he'd been gone two weeks without a clue of when he'd return. And now the Johnson's house was on fire.

 

She wasn't completely helpless, though, as she climbed the nearest tree to the bedroom window of the burning building, and using her foot to kick in the glass. Climbing in, she noticed that the flames hadn't quite reached this room, but the thick black smoke had, and it enveloped her instantaneously.

 

“Lucy,” she called, coughing immediately after, “Lucy, talk to me, I need to know where you are!”

 

There was a high pitched cry to her left, which she assumed was Lucy's attempt at communication. “Okay, I'm going to need you to lay down, alright,” Rose called out. “Breathe in as close to the floor as you can until I can reach you,” she started coughing again, the smoke dancing in and out of her lungs.

 

“I want my mama,” Lucy cried from the far right corner of the room. Having narrowed down the girl's location, Rose stumbled over the mess and waded through the smoke.

 

“I know, sweetheart,” she cooed, feeling for the girl's hand and picking her up. She pressed her little face into her shoulder, hoping the cloth from her blouse would act as an air filter that the child could breathe through, and started her way back toward the window.

 

There was a wave of heat as the bedroom door began to burn and grumble under the weight of the wood that began to burn and the flames which were finally entering the room. Rose swore silently, trying to use one hand to lift the girl onto the window sill.

 

“Can you climb down this tree, Lucy,” she asked.

 

“I- I think so,” the girl coughed.

 

“Okay, here you go. Grab that branch,” she pulled it down for the Lucy to reach, “There,” she instructed. The flames grew higher, gnawing at the beams of the wooden room as Lucy started to slowly swing her body along toward the trunk of the tree that she would have to climb down.  Rose knew she couldn't jump out onto the branch until the Lucy was safely on another branch; so she waited in the midst of the growing fire and the unstable house, cursing in every language she'd accumulated on the TARDIS.

 

Five seconds later, she could hear the gathering neighborhood cry in relief as Lucy made it down far enough to jump into her father's waiting arms, and cries of her own name. A segment of roofing collapsed three feet behind her, which she took as her cue to exit the building. Stepping onto the windowsill wasn't as easy as she'd expected, as her bell-bottomed pants snagged on  the splintering wood and sent her pitching forward. Thinking as quickly as she could, she grabbed onto the nearest thing, hoping it'd be stable enough to hold her weight.

 

The metal piping on the side of the house was hot, she realized, rolling her eyes and gasping in pain simultaneously. It was very hot, but she held on despite the searing pain. Eyes filling with tears and searing with the heat of the metal, she released the piping with one hand to find something to grasp lower down. It was an eight foot drop from this side of the house and she knew there was no way on Earth she'd land that unscathed.

 

The flames had reached the very top of the house and were flaring out the window, it's roar adding to the noise from the crowd below.

 

“Rosie, be careful,” she heard Lucy shout. She heard an older man cry out to someone else, “the poor dear, her hands will be charred!” And an other woman yell, “my God, what if she falls?” There were children crying. The searing pain from the pipes and her added weight from hanging from her hands began to impair her judgment.

 

“Doctor,” she whispered, “I'm going to kill you if I get out of this alive!” Closing her eyes and breathing in deeply, she used her legs to propel herself from the building and released the pipes.

 

The screaming that followed was unbearable, though she couldn't tell if they were her own screams or those from the crowd. Or both. Time moved slower than it ever had in the TARDIS as she prepared herself for the impact which would surely break her. 'Come on Tyler,' she thought, 'loosen up.'

 

The first impact she made was not with the cold grass, but with a body.

 

“Ooomff,” she heard as the two of them collided with the ground. “I gotcha, Miss,” the boy beneath her breathed out.

 

“Rosie,” Lucy screamed, “Miss Tyler,” and, “somebody call an ambulance!”

 

“It won't do us any good,” and elderly woman choked out, “the fire department is already on it's way. We have to wait!”

 

Remembering the body beneath her, Rose rolled herself off of  the boy who had “caught” her and flopped onto her stomach. The pain was disorienting-- and all the clamor being made over her was making her head pound. Or was that the work of the smoke, she wondered.

 

She opened her eyes to see feet. Trousers and shoes and legs and knees surrounding her on all sides. But a glimpse of something bright blue drew her attention back. With all the strength she could muster, she peered through the gaps in peoples legs to see a pale little girl, long silvery blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Her cheeks were stained with grime and tears, and Rose knew that she'd never seen the girl before.

 

However, her body was unwilling to sustain her inquiring mind in its current state, and her eyes drifted shut. She could hear sirens growing in the distance and the fire growing with them. Then she felt herself be lifted by strong arms into a cool house.

 

“Don't worry, dear,” a calm elderly voice calmed her, “the ambulance'll be here in a tic-- oh, hello,” she said into what Rose guessed was a telephone pole. “Doctor Smith, it's Glenda Simmons from Ottery St. Catchpole.” A pause. “Yes.” Another pause, “There's been an accident, Doctor. Rose has been hurt.”

 

–    DW – DW – DW – DW – DW – DW –

–     

After arriving at the hospital, the Doctor spoke to every doctor and nurse who had cared for Rose in the two days  it took him to get back to her. He'd run straight for her charts to asses her situation for himself, and used the sonic screwdriver to examine her head to toe.

 

Exhaustion, oxygen starvation, two major burns to the hands, and minor internal bruising were all he could find. According to the physician on duty, a young man attempted to catch her and broke her fall. The injuries she sustained could have been fatal if it hadn't been for the lad's injury.

 

Bill had been his name. Barely thirteen and attempting to be the hero. Surprisingly, the lad had walked away unscathed, if not a little short of breath. The Doctor made a not to go see the boy and thank him himself, the minute Rose woke up.

 

But right now, the only thing on his mind was the girl on the hospital bed. His brave, selfless, and somewhat stupid companion. Rose, who was lying before him, bandaged up from her hands to her head and hooked up to an IV machine which was dispensing her pain medication. Rose, who like Bill, had decided to play the part of the hero. But unlike Bill in his luck. He didn't know whether to proud of her for saving little Lucy Johnson, or furious with her for putting her life on the line like that. Or, he mused, terrified at himself for having left her in that little town while he hunted down the creature that the people of Ottery St. Catchpole had been haunted by.

 

They'd only been in town for a week since the TARDIS had refused to leave her place of landing for whatever reason the Doctor had not figured out. So he'd rented a car and insisted that Rose stay in town with the Stevenson girls who had planned to take her to an Aerosmith concert. He would only be gone two days, and Rose would have never given up an opportunity to see an authentic 80's rock band in the 80's. Which, of course, was the only reason she'd agreed to stay behind this time.

 

But as his luck would have it, the Doctor was delayed. The car had broken down beyond repair with the sonic screwdriver, forcing him to have to hitchhike-- something he hadn't done in years. He reached a payphone five days after the fact, and informed Rose of his troubles, and that he was safely in London.

 

While he was there, he'd run into more trouble, when a woman had claimed to recognize him as her son. She'd chased him around with a broom in her hand, ordering him to come home because it wasn't safe.

 

“They'll find you, it's not safe! It's only been a year...”

 

He'd had absolutely no idea what she'd been on about and was about to chalk it up on substance abuse when he'd had to duck a burst of light which had been hurled at him. Turning, he saw a group of men in black robes running toward him and wielding long thin sticks in their hands. “We've got you now, Crouch,” one had shouted. So he ran.

 

He ran as far as he could for as long as he could, finding a nice little hole-up by a newspaper stand which was displaying his own face to the public with the headline “ARMED AND DANGEROUS.”

He nicked a copy of the paper and read it to find out that a man with a similar appearance to his, by the name of Bartemeus Crouch, imprisoned for torture and homicide, had escaped prison and was on the prowl.

 

Five days after having been holed up, he'd nicked another paper which apologized profusely to the public and to “Crouch's unfortunate” doppelganger for the scare and inconvenience as the convict was reported to still be safely behind bars. And that was when he'd gotten the call from Glenda Simmons and promptly stole a car and drove the two days back to Ottery St. Catchpole and to the hospital where Rose had been taken.

 

After making sure that his companion would be alright, he sat on the chair by her bed and waited. Her hand was lying by her side, and the Doctor was tempted to take it into his own, like he had on countless occasions, but it was heavily bandaged and he remembered how bad the burns had been. Needing to do something with his hands, he settled for fiddling with the sonic.

 

He could have her checked out this hospital and take her somewhere that could heal her injuries in seven seconds flat. Like Chronnil IX. Their medicine was much more advanced than anything this hospital could offer. In fact, anywhere in the universe had better healing technology than Earth year 1984.

 

But the TARDIS wouldn't budge. He'd even gone back to check on her, and she'd stubbornly refused to leave her spot.

 

There was something, though. A tiny detail that he kept overlooking – kept filing away for later contemplation. One teensy-tiny detail that had been staring him in the face and following his every move. Literally, blue eyes watching him, small feet following out to the car and into the TARDIS, and back to the hospital. A small hand grabbing his own at every crosswalk and crowded elevator lift back up to the third floor.

 

A little girl sitting cross-legged at the foot of Rose's bed. She had a piece of paper and box of crayons in front of her, but didn't touch them. Instead, her big blue eyes were still fixed on his surprised brown ones.

 

Now, where did she come from, he wondered.

 

“I hope you don't mind, sir,” said a matronly voice from beside him. “I brought her something to keep her busy.”

 

The Doctor blinked. He looked from the girl to the nurse who had spoken to him.

 

“What? No-- no,” he stammered. Clearing his throat, he looked back to the child and nodded, “Go ahead and color.” Her blue eyes lingered on his for only a moment longer before they diverted to the colors in a decisive focus.

 

“She sure is a special little girl,” the nurse spoke again.

 

“Sure is,” he mused.

 

“She yours,” the question came,  though he wasn't sure if he should have expected it or not.

 

“No,” he chuckled quietly. “My eyes haven't been that blue in a long while.” The nurse eyed him skeptically at that comment, but continued to speak.

 

“Well, she came in with Miss Tyler in the ambulance. Hasn't left her side since,” she sighed. “We tried to ask where her daddy was, so he could come get her while Miss Tyler woke up.”

 

“Oh, Rose isn't her mother,” he said flatly. The nurse looked uncomfortable.

 

“Well, we weren't sure, sir. She wouldn't talk to us. I think she's a shy one.”

 

He continued to watch her color the page in silence. She hadn't left Rose's side at all, apart from leaving to the TARDIS with him. Something was very strange about the child.

 

“Would you like me to take her elsewhere, sir?”

 

He shook his head, seeing the girl was at ease and content to be sitting with Rose. “Nahh,” he dragged the word out with a practiced nonchalance. “I'll watch her until her parents turn up, it's fine.”

 

After checking Rose's vitals and informing the Doctor that she would be just fine, the nurse left the room. The little girl stopped coloring and gave the Doctor her picture – the page was swirling with colors. Reds, greens, blues, purples, oranges, and gold were bending together in a mess of wax and flushing into the center.

 

“You're a Time Lord,” her small voice stated. There was no question on her face. The Doctor was gobsmacked.

 

“How do you mean,” he inquired softly, locking onto her blue orbs once again. She quietly grasped her long blonde braid and bit into it, shrugging her shoulders.

 

“You look it,” she whispered.

 

Despite his shock, her answer amused and intrigued him. So before she could look away to start on another picture, he questioned her again.

 

“And how do you know about Time Lords?” He adjusted himself to her eye level by resting his elbows on his knees and holding his chin on his fist.

 

“My mummy told me,” she answered simply.

 

“And who's your mummy,” he asked her, kindly hoping for information which could help the child get home to her parents. But he had no such luck as she looked away again and stared out the window. The Doctor waited five minutes before he concluded that she wouldn't be answering that question. Trying for another tactic, he held his hand out to her in a formal gesture.

 

“Well,” he smiled, “I'm  the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord.”

 

She smiled back and grabbed his hand enthusiastically.

 

“I'm Luna. I'm three,” her bright smile only made his grow exponentially. Her following giggle melted his heart, “and you have Nargles in your hair.”

 

 


	2. Of Hospitals and Hinkypunks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Rose wakes up, there are two elephants in the room.

It was very quiet when Rose awoke. It was dark and quiet and her head felt heavy. Although, it didn't feel as heavy as her left arm and chest did. Her eyes began fluttering open, the dark room coming into a bleary focus.

“Hey there,” the Doctor's voice came quietly from beside her. She turned her head toward where he was seated up by the head of the bed.

“Doctor,” she asked, recollecting the most recent events. “Oh my God, Doctor,” she snapped, fully remembering her last thought. “Where the flippen hell were you?”

“Shh,” he chuckled, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “We'll talk about this later,” he told her softly, smiling faintly.

“Oh no,” Rose snapped. “You don't get to tell me when we'll talk about this. We'll bloody well suss it out now. You said you'd be gone two days,” she barked, furious.

“Rose, you know I ran into trouble! I called and let you know it was all alright, didn't I,” he asked, eyebrow raised into his hair. “And yes, I'd prefer to talk about this later because Luna's finally asleep and I'd rather not wake her up. That girl has a gob worse than mine-- not to mention an imagination to compete with the Xylax people,” he finished, gesturing to the little girl curled up at Rose's side-- head resting on Rose's chest.

“Oh,” Rose stated, dumbfounded. “Oh,” she repeated. “I'd wondered why I felt so heavy.” She gently reached for the bedside controller that she'd seen to her left and pressed one of the buttons to slowly raise herself up into a semi-seated position. She'd tried not to bother the sleeping child, but upon feeling the bed readjust, Luna had scooted downward to rest her head on Rose's lap instead. Rose chuckled slightly before looking back to the Doctor.

They were quite the sight, Luna and Rose, moving in sync with each other. The mystery of the child had plagued him the entire day. After hours of non-ending chatter, Luna had only managed to inform him of Nargles-- which he'd then committed and entire fifteen minutes to educate her of her misinformed conception of the poor creatures. As she had believed them to be troublemakers and thieves, she was quite surprised by his claim that they were only seeking suitable habitats for the queens of their colonies.

Along with Nargle-talk, she told him more about the fire, and how Rose had gone up the tree because the entire ground level of the house was in flames. Lucy had been upstairs because her dad had grounded her. Rose had been across the street at Racheal Stevenson's house, watching their MTV when she heard the screams and then ran out to help.

The Doctor had asked Luna if they knew how the fire had started, but she simply shook her head and resumed coloring quietly. For hours, he tried to navigate the conversation toward something useful or, like her parents and who they were, but the loquacious girl had always found a way to redirect him by becoming distracted.

Speaking to her, however, the Doctor was able to make a general assessment of Luna. She said she was three, but her speech patterns suggested she was closer to four, although he would have wagered she was four and close to five. She was very bright, and watching her facial and bodily mannerisms during conversation led him to believe that she was more mentally competent than most human children her age. Luna was clever, well spoken, mostly distracted, granted. But he'd never been one to begrudge a person of that particular quality.

He rather enjoyed her, to be honest. The past few hours had been fun and mostly amusing, if not slightly counter-productive. But here she lay, head on Rose's lap as Rose cautiously put her fingers to the sleeping girl's hair.

“Who is she,” Rose asked softly.

Quickly and bewildered, he looked at her. “You mean you don't know,” the question sounding harsher than he'd intended.

“Am I supposed to,” she huffed.

“No, no. Sorry, it's just,” he stammered, tiredly rubbing at his eyes with his palms. “I thought you might know her-- she seems to be very fond of you,” he gestured toward her.

“I haven't got any idea why,” Rose admitted, amazed at the prospect.

“She was here when I got here. Which,” he pointed out, “was as soon as I got the call from the village.” Rose had no idea how he had returned so quickly this time, yet couldn't show the same courtesy when he'd promised to be gone only a couple of days. Unfortunately, she'd resigned herself to never knowing how his priorities were sorted, and stored the musing with all the others that she'd labeled, 'that's just the way he does things.'

“I've never seen her before,” she reiterated after a few minutes of gauging her situation. She'd tried to feel the familiar sense of discomfort, being embraced by a strange child. But the feeling never came.

“Her name is Luna,” the Doctor informed her, leaning back in his chair again. “She said she's three years old, but I reckon she's a bit older,” he chuckled.

“How long was I out of it,” she wondered aloud.

“Oh,” he replied, “a couple of days. But I've been here eighteen hours. Luna's been asleep for five. Wouldn't stop talking between then and when I got here,” he complained, although the tone was too soft for the complaint to be too serious.

The feeling in Rose's leg had slowly begun to dissipate under Luna's tight grasp, so she gently untangled the girl from her leg and held her in her arms.

“So,” she started slowly, blowing a hair out of her face in thought. “What do we do? We have to find her parents, right?”

The Doctor grinned, “Always the domestic approach, Rose Tyler!”

She glared at him. “Well what am I s’posed to bloody say? S’pose you just assumed we’d leave her here for her mum and dad to find her. Bloody useless you are.”

Brow furrowing at her tone, he lifted the sleeping child and answered, “No. Of course not. I only figured you might like to be discharged before we did anything else, seeing as how you seem to have forgotten that you’re currently laying in a hospital bed,” he finished flatly, the laying the unspoken inquiry down thick.

Rose glanced her surroundings sheepishly. It wasn’t often she snapped at the Doctor, but likewise, it wasn’t like him to leave her for two weeks out of her own time zone. Fortunately she’d been on Earth, but she felt her annoyance was still justified. It was likely just as bad that she had taken that time away from him and landed in hospital anyway.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said softly, reaching over and hitting the button that rang the nurse or doctor on duty. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to find a way back, I know. But I don’t want this,” he tried to gesture around the sleeping infant in his arms to the entirety of the room, “to be something that happens every time I’m not around.

Rose chuckled, “Well it’s only happened this once, and--“

“Rose is awake!” Luna’s small voice drifted from the Doctor’s arms. She struggled lightly to leave his hold and hopped onto the bed with Rose once again. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispered into Rose’s ear and hugged her across the middle. Quickly recovering from their previous conversation, Rose grinned at the child and thanked her.

It wasn’t long before someone came in and prepared Rose for her discharge, the Doctor all the while assuring them with the assistance of his psychic paper that he was an MD and could care for her injuries in the safety of their home, from where he ran his practice.

They had to finish that conversation. Rose knew it—so did the Doctor, or, at least she assumed he knew. She also assumed he would do his best to avoid it. The subject matter was too heavy, she could see it in his eyes when he assessed her burns and bruises, or when she struggled for breath. He blamed himself. Part of her wanted to blame him, too, but she knew that wasn’t fair. He’d left her in Ottery St. Catchpole, yes, but he didn’t tell her to scale a burning building and rescue the girl. He’d never ask her to do that. In fact, that was exactly the type of thing he would have told her not to dare do, had he been there at the time. But he wasn’t there to do it himself, she told herself, and someone had to do it. The firemen would have been too late, and Rose was not about to stand by and watch a defenseless little girl die.

As the Doctor and the doctor continued their consultations, Rose turned her attention to Luna, who was seated next to Rose, thigh to thigh along the side of the bed.

“Luna,” Rose started, the blue eyed child staring up at her. Rose tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and smirked as Luna mimicked her. “Do you know where your mummy is?”

The child shook her head in answer. “Mummy went away, daddy said,” she murmured. “He said she’d gone away on accident.” Rose’s heart broke. She didn’t know if that meant Luna’s mother had passed away, or if she’d left willingly, but she did know that this small girl latched to her side didn’t have a mother. No one to braid her hair at night and giggle with her over silly things, or watch telly with until three in morning, or cuddle with her after her first heartbreak. She supposed any friend could do those things with her, but not quite like a mother.

She blinked back the tears she hadn’t realized had appeared in her eyes. “Well,” she cleared her throat. “How about daddy? Do you think he’s looking for you?”

Luna giggled. “The Doctor asked the same question. Why would daddy be looking for me? He knows where I am.” Rose Blinked.

“He does?”

“Uh-huh,” Luna sang, beaming up at Rose.

“Well, we can go ahead and leave at any minute we please,” The Doctor interrupted happily. Rose glanced at Luna and he knowingly took the little girl’s hand. “Up we go Loony Luna!”

Luna’s giggles were infectious to both adults as they joined in her glee.

“Let’s go find your daddy, eh?”

 

DW~DW~DW~DW~DW

 

It was weird, Rose decided, riding in a car with the Doctor. It was even weirder that they had a small passenger in the backseat chattering away at them as they drove back into the small village community where they’d decided to look for Luna’s father. Rose quickly pieced together how the Doctor had mistaken the small blonde’s age, because she spoke quite a bit more and quite a bit more eloquently than most children she’d known at the age of three.

 

Even weirder than the child in the back seat of the car was the Doctor driving and chatting along with her, saying things Rose wished she could still consider bizarre. It was bizarre, though. Luna was saying things about HinyPinkies or something, and the Doctor would give her a brief history of the creatures. Although the language was insane and unbelievable, the environment made her feel fuzzy. Not an altogether bad or sick kind of fuzzy, but warm, and excited.

 The Doctor’s smile widened at Luna and shot the girl a wink through the rearview mirror in reward for asking a question that must have been “the right question,” and continued to drivel on about the HinkyPinkies. Rose’s cheeks felt warm when her gaze met his for half a second, but she threw in a question of her own just to humor them.

“Sorry, but I don’t think I’ve seen a HinkyPinkie before… What color are they?”

Luna guffawed as the Doctor chuckled and corrected her. “Hinkypunks, Rose,” he said with a soft smile, and Luna dove right in on describing the foreign creatures to his companion.   
He listened to child natter on about the Hinkypunks, and marveled at her surprisingly accurate description of them. It was absolutely astounding how much she knew, being so young and from Earth. In 1983, no less. There was something about her, though, nagging at his thoughts. Or his mind altogether, like it was begging to gain entrance. He hadn’t felt something like that in a long time, and although his mind wanted to reach back out to it, he stopped himself.

He didn’t know anything about this child, though he had picked up on her being a rare medium-level telepath (bordering on high-level, if he was honest), and allowing himself to make that connection with the part of her mind that was reaching out was akin to walking by a house, seeing a cat and taking that cat away from that house and bringing it back on the TARDIS with him.

Well, maybe that wasn’t the best analogy, but the point still stood. It would be very rude to her family, regardless of them sharing her mental capabilities or not. He couldn’t quite tell if they did, though, because Little Luna seemed to be quite adept at keeping personal things locked up and personal—almost with the proficiency of someone who had been taught to do so. Questions surrounding the girl buzzed through his head quite rapidly. Who was she? Who taught her? Who or what were her parents?

The sight before him as they rounded a large grassy hill made him gasp. Rose turned her attention back to the driving Time-Lord in question. Seeing his eyes widen at whatever he’d seen, she took a peak out the window as well.

“Is that really—“ She started when Luna yelled over her.

“That’s Bill’s house!”

The Doctor hit the brakes and made to turn up the driveway, lurching Rose forward and back suddenly, still not quite believing her eyes.

“Doctor,” she whispered, eyes glued to the tall building with several chimneys. It was more than four stories tall and so precariously balanced that it seemed to lean over the small barn which sat quite near to the base of it. The pigpen off to the side of the safety-hazard house held four small creatures which resembled pigs, but looked as if a pig had a more attractively fat cousin that preferred to stay clean and perfectly well groomed. The whole scene was like something she’d read out of a book—a very specific one.

The Doctor stopped the car and Luna immediately unfastened herself and went running up the steps of the porch. The Doctor turned to Rose, who was still bracing herself on the dashboard, his eyes wide with laughter and disbelief. “Rose,” he exclaimed—

“Wizards,” they both exclaimed.


End file.
